When the school holidays arrive, a break from the school routine can be wonderful. However, it can also be very difficult to ensure that children are getting enough sleep, especially during the longer summer holidays.
In this blog, Dr Lindsay Browning offers you a range of ‘summer holiday sleep tips’ to help you over the upcoming summer vacation period.
Holidays and disruption to children’s sleep
When school holiday arrives, the structure and routine that school imposes on the whole family goes out of the window.
With all of the flexibility and fun that this freedom brings, it can also cause major disruption to children’s sleep. They may be going to bed late and sleeping in.
Added to this lack of routine are problems like the increased summer temperature, light nights and jet-lag caused by long distance holidays – all making a good night’s sleep even harder.
Read on to find my advice and some easy-to-implement tips for parents, guardians and carers, to help minimise overtired children over the summer holidays.
Summer Holiday Sleep Tips
1. Maintain a consistent bedtime
Routine is the key to a good night’s sleep.
Even if you want your children to be able go to bed later and sleep-in later in the morning, routine is important. Therefore, you must make the ‘new timings’ consistent.
Have a regular wake up time throughout the summer holidays to help strengthen your child’s biological clock, rather than different bedtimes and waketimes each day.
2. Block out light
To help overcome the light evenings, make sure that you have thick curtains or blackout blinds in the children’s bedrooms. This will help block out the late evening and early morning sunshine, which can disrupt sleep.
3. Keep a similar bedtime routine
Maintain a similar bedtime routine to that of term time. Have some pre-bedtime wind down time with a bath and story, even if this is at a later time than during school term (see tip 1).
These pre-bedtime cues can be forgotten in the excitement of summer activities, but are very helpful for promoting sleep.
4. Keep the bedroom cool
To help deal with the increased heat of summer (especially if there has been a heatwave or you are in a country with warmer temperatures to the UK), consider using a fan in the child’s bedroom (safely out of reach of young children).
Also, keep curtains closed in the daytime to prevent the room heating up by the sun. You can also give children a cooler bath, so that they don’t get too hot before bed.
5. Encourage exercise
Exercise is really important for helping to promote good quality sleep. Try to encourage your children to get active outside every day, rather than spend all day playing Fortnite!
6. Prepare for a change of timezones to reduce jetlag
To help children cope with the jet-lag, caused by long distance flights, consider moving the child’s bedtime nearer the destination timezone by 15 minutes each night for a few days before your holiday.
For example, if you are travelling west (e.g. to Florida), put the children to bed 15 minutes later than usual and let them get up 15 minutes later than usual, increasing this late bedtime and waking time by 15 minutes each day before your holiday – this way they will already be nearer the destination time zone before you even travel.
If you are travelling east (e.g. to Greece) then put the children to bed early by 15 minutes and wake them 15 minutes earlier than normal before your holiday, increasing the difference over several days so that they are already going to bed nearer the destination time zone.
No stress summer sleep routine
Don’t worry too much if a “normal” routine isn’t adhered to every day. Even by only using a few of these tips, it may help ease the stress that a change of sleeping pattern can cause over the school summer holidays.
If you find that your children’s sleeping patterns have got wildly out of hand and you need more expert advice, please contact us. We specialise in children’s sleep issues, as well as adults.